Claire Harrup – Layered landscapes 

One thing that fascinated me about Claire Harrup’s work for her 2024 winning project for National Trust and Harper Collins book Britain’s Landmarks and Legends was the process used to create it, once I discovered that these vibrant colourful images started as a series of marks and patterns in black and white.

This post is the result of an interview with the artist, reproduced in her own words with the questions removed.

I never really set out to become an illustrator, but I’ve always enjoyed making images. In the early days I made collages and prints, working commercially really came from a necessity to earn a living. I have always taken inspiration from artists who manage to blur those lines between illustration and art, artists such as Edward Bawden, Shelia Robinson, David Gentleman and Laura Carlin.

Recently I’ve been working on a real mixture of things, from packaging for a supermarket to an illustrated book about Christmas in the trenches during World War One. My studio time is often filled with commercial illustration work, but this year I am trying to make a conscious effort to spend more time on some of my own personal projects, hopefully revisiting some printmaking and make some new collage work.

I had worked with the team at HarperCollins and The National Trust a year or so before on a recipe book, so when Peter (Editorial director for the National Trust books) messaged to ask if I would be interested in working on Britain’s Landmarks and Legends I was thrilled to work with them again. In the initial e-mails Peter referenced an image in my portfolio, a self-directed Essex landscape, that he thought had the right feel that he was looking for in the book.

We wanted the images to feel connected to a tradition of British landscape painting. I greatly admire the work of Paul Nash, Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden, all of which tackled very similar subjects with such skill and success. The work of Eric Ravilious was referenced in the brief. It’s one of those rare times when my own personal passion for British landscape and interest in archaeology aligned perfectly with the project. I did a lot of research before I started the book, careful to look at colour choices and how to make the compositions feel not only very British but also as mysterious and magical as the legends written about them.

More often than not I do all my prep work in black and white. Every mark that I use to make up an image is made by hand using various traditional media including brush and ink, collage and printmaking techniques. For me it is incredibly important to keep some the spontaneity and physicality of working by hand. It allows opportunities to embrace chance, experiment with mediums and gives an energy to my mark marking that I have never been able to achieve when working solely digitally. It’s the most exciting part of making an image and not one I’d give up easily.

I never actually make a mark within the computer, but I do compose and colour my images digitally. This allows for a greater freedom when it comes to making changes and editing, especially useful when working commercially. I found that working solely in black and white not only gave me the widest range of colours when using adjustment layers in Photoshop but also gives me a complete focus on form, composition and texture at the working stage of an image. I can almost completely take colour out of the equation until I start putting the image together.

Colouring digitally is amazing tool. It allows me the freedom to experiment without consequence and the ability to be able to fine tune an image as much as I like. I can go back into previous layers and edit the colour completely across an image, unlike if you are working by hand, when your colour choices are set to earlier decisions. I tend to work quite intuitively when it comes to colour. I don’t very often have a set idea of how a final image is going to look. I will usually just keep experimenting until it feels right for the image.

Embracing digital methods have changed my practice over the years. At first it gave me a lot more confidence, an ability to quickly edit anything you’re not happy with is a powerful tool. With time I have been able to fine tune a method of working that combines the handmade with a lot of the freedoms of working digitally.